X-Com: In Rememberance
by Guardsman HR-99115
Summary: My attempt at doing an X-Com story in an World War Z format. A series of interviews documenting the Ethereal war.
1. Chapter 1

(Hamburg, Germany was one of the first areas rebuilt after the First Contact War. I meet retired Staff Sergeant Ignacio Delegado one block south of the memorial, in order to hear what happened during Operation Devil's Moon from the only participant to survive the war. The Sergeant appears to be in good health, with the exception of a massive plasma burn to his right arm, clearly visible in the short sleeved shirt he is wearing.)

"For the Germans, it started when the GasSats (An X-COM colloquialism for Type-1 Chemical Delivery Platform. Also known as pods) started raining down on the street. They acted like any human would and gathered around to see what it was. They didn't know any better."

[The Pamplona native shakes his head, eyes closed as he remembers.]

"For me and the rest of EUROCOM 1st Battalion/ 1st Company/ 2nd Platoon/ 4th Squad, the war started when the Skyranger touched down right here. All 8 of us moved out, taking cover behind cars and that statue. We looked pretty smart, followed our training and found the remains of the recon team."

[Here he blanches and shivers]

"It was a mess, we found all but one after a little looking around. They all looked like their rib cages had exploded, like in those Aliens movies I saw while in the US. The worse part was the smell. They smelled like they'd been dead a week instead of 20 minutes. I still don't know how that happened, we never saw it again thank god."

[He turns and gestures to the memorial, a large statue of 8 X-COM Soldiers with weapons drawn, their faces defiant.]

"We didn't look anything like that. We were scared out of our minds, trying to figure out what the hell had happened. Suddenly the boss came on the com."

"**The Boss?"**

"Yeah, Lieutenant General Patrick Mitchell US Army. He was in charge of the whole project. He had this way of speaking, calmed us down but firmly told us to get our asses in gear. We moved to the the warehouse, following a brown-orange smear on the ground. I was one of the 4 who went through the doors, the other went through the windows."

The warehouse was pretty empty; a few crates and a forklift. We could see the missing soldier, just standing there. Adrian approached him, asked if the man was ok. The German's face was... Blank for lack of a better word. Bang. Adrian goes down, eviscerated by the soldiers shotgun blast. That's when everything went to hell.

[He grimaces]

"Sectoids started coming out of the woodwork, the vents and even the goddamn crates. We opened up, kept shooting as we found ourselves back to back. Jessie and Bianca went down before it was all over."

[We approach the memorial, the names of everyone who died are inscribed on it. The Sergeant salutes the memorial, tears gathering in his eyes. We walk on as the sergeant wipes his eyes clear]

"I'm the only member of the original squad still alive. James fell during Stone Serpent to a Cyberdisc, Itzli during Falling Sword from a Chrysalid and we lost Alina during Hell Mountain (X-Com nickname for the assault on an Ethereal Base in the Swiss Alps. 17 Operatives died during the assault.) Carla died last year from an infection in her lungs she acquired when a Thin Man gassed her 6 years ago. Henry became a MEC trooper after Falling Sword but was crushed during Discarded Arrow after EXALT collapsed the mine they were fighting in.

[He seems to sag as he sits on a bench facing the Memorial.]

"4 years. 4 goddamn years before we finally blew their Temple Ship to hell and another 3 stamping out EXALT. Over 22 million dead. I still can't grasp just how large that number is."

[He shakes his head]

"I suppose I just don't want to."


	2. Chapter 2

(Nikolai Shevchenko meets with me outside the offices of Ministry of Defense in Kiev. The tall man's dark hair is cut short in traditional military style, a holdover from his days in X-Com. The Ukranian's skin glows a faint orange, an effect of the bio-electric skin mod.)

Devil's Moon sent a shock wave through X-Com, our first engagement with the enemy and 3 of our own had come back in body bags. It didn't matter that we hadn't known them personally or that our only connection is that we worked on the same base, it could have just as easily been us or one of our friends that died. It's important to note that when the war started, only a fifth of all members had seen heavy combat. That changed pretty soon but it those confusing and terrifying early days, it was up to the old timers to keep us together.

Then suddenly we get word that a flight of Raven fighters had downed a hostile UFO. A UFO, I never thought I'd be told to assault a UFO when I joined but my entire platoon was sent. Overkill really, there were 7 sectoids and a single Thin Man alive when we got there.

He coughs harshly.

We were ordered to leave as much intact as possible but we used explosives as often as we could. It was cathartic, seeing those feared bogeymen in pieces. I was classified as a leftside CQC specialist and carried an M1014 shotgun, punched right through the thin man. But I was to close and he exploded like a fucking ballon, spewing gas everywhere. This was back when we were wearing Ballistic vests and basic helmets, absolutely no defense against gas. I breathed in too much.

He coughs again.

The medics saved my life for a time but missed an infection. My lungs are slowly shutting down. I will die soon from this damned Keprals (Named after Lieutenant Jason Kepral, its first victim) syndrome. But I've lived a good life and science gave me 6 years that I wouldn't have had otherwise.

(I say goodbye to him and head towards my taxi, him towards his car. Nikolai Shevchenko died of Lung failure brought on by Keprals 6 weeks after this interview.)


	3. Chapter 3

(It's a quiet day in Colorado Springs, Colarado. The sun is out and the Cadets from the Air Force Academy are enjoying a rare day off. Colonel Jordan Taylor was kind enough to meet me at a local diner. Not so long ago he was a pilot in one of X-Com NORAMCOM's 3 Raven Interceptor squadrons. He is also credited with the first takedown of an UFO.)

I was a Captain back then, 2nd in line for the 3rd Squadron. We got the call early in the morning, just coming on rotation. We piled into our Ravens, all armed with AIM-27 Avalanche air to air missiles. We felt pretty good, the Raven was one of the best interceptors ever made and the Avalanche was newest and greatest, bigger payload and faster than its predecessors and each interceptor carried 8.

He takes a purple jam container and places it on the table. 6 ketchup packets seem to spiral around the purple jam with 2 more directly behind the jam.

He shakes his head "There was no SOP for UFOs back then so most of the squadron was spread out to contain the bogey, give him no place to go without getting a missile up the ass. Major Cortez took the first shot and the damn missile went wide. Some kind of jammer screwed with guidance. So he got closer and kept trying until all 8 missiles went wide. Then it was my turn."

He takes away one of the ketchup packets from behind the jam and puts it away. He moves the other one very close.

"I got close, very close. In hindsight it would have been a horrible thing to do when fighting other humans. I was a mile behind him and took the first shot. It got close only for a green burst of plasma to slap it away. The bastard didn't even try to dodge. So I did something even more stupid. I fired everything. Doing that while fighting humans is a huge no-no. Waste of money, ordinance and time."

He chuckles "7 of the best missiles designed by human hands and only 2 hit. It was enough though, knocked out the engine and sent it down to earth. After that it was it was the dirt humpers' problem and I went home as the first person to shoot down an UFO. It's funny, 100 years of air combat and the best way to fight is suddenly how we did it during WWI."


	4. Chapter 4

(It's a quiet day in New York's central park as I walk alongside Sergeant Julian "Malochio" Forte. His gait is that of a predator, one accustomed to gazing at heads through a scope.)

"It's rumored that the first thing Major Zhang said to an X-Com team was how killing Sectoids was just like killing a man. He was right. Sight, breathe, shoot. Sight, breathe, shoot."

(He snaps out a quick rhythm with his fingers.)

"Operation Clipped Crow seemed screwed from the start, a Raven flight had downed a larger UFO, what we would later call a Large Scout, in the Absaroka Range, Wyoming. My squad was tapped to go and scout by ourselves as a few of the Skyrangers had maintenance issues. We got there quickly and my spotter and I found a small outcropping roughly 100 yards away to set up on while the rest of the squad went to go look at the UFO."

"That's when things went to hell. A small roar started to echo as a flight of 4 Floaters strafed the squad as they rushed towards the UFO, nailing Smitsen in the back with a plasma burst. My spotter and I started shooting, forced to look at the horrifying mish mash that is a floater through a microscope. My heart sank when I heard Plasma fire inside the UFO, apparently the squad had rushed into the sights of a group of Sectoids, killing Blunt and Cage before they even knew they were there. It took a while but my buddy and I finally brought down the Floaters, they were very good at dodging and jinxing, rushing to see if the others were alive inside."

"Brackman and Mags had survived but Santos had been killed in the crossfire. One good thing came of it though, Meld. For the first time, we managed to recover some for the lab. Good thing too, otherwise Vahlen might have never come up with half of what we have today."

_**{}{}{}{}{}**_

I'm baack!


	5. Chapter 5

(It's a dark night in Los Angeles, seemingly endless clouds blotting out the moon and stars. James Hearst was a Corporal in the USAA 2nd ID. His platoon was on patrol when a flight of F/A-18s shot down an Abductor class UFO. James is an small man who walks with a cane.)

It's funny how even when the Aliens invade, when something goes boom near the DMZ you blame the North Koreans. They'd been trying to bypass the DMZ for years.

My platoon was on what we called "Ground Pound" duty. Basically we'd drive around in Humvees modified with Ground Penetrating Radar in order to find any new tunnels. It's boring work and you rarely find a tunnel and if you do they're usually decades old.

You have to remember this was in the opening months of the war, back when there were a lot of questions and almost no answers. So when we found out the Zoomies shot down an unidentified aircraft hauling ass for the DMZ our first thought was that it was the North Koreans. Maybe they'd finally gotten something new from their sugar daddy in China and we'd just shot it down.

That was dispelled the wreck. A purple and grey disc that was mostly intact.

Our weapons were the standard M16A4, they use a standard 5.56mm round. That works fine on sectoids but for the Muttons that came racing out of their they did jackshit.

3 of those things charged out, walls of red muscle clad in green armor spewing plasma at us. Looking back, we were lucky they had charged instead of hiding in the wreckage. It was over quickly once the .50's opened up though.

It took almost 3 hours for an XCOM team to get there, I guess their local HQ hadn't been set up yet.

(Corporal James Hearst managed to avoid most of the war. He works in a library now, a nice, quiet life)

_**{[-]}**_

I'm back! Sorry about the long wait, I lost my notebook full of half written chapters so I had to make these up from scratch. It's not my greatest but I wanted to get this one out. I've got another one almost finished within the next 2 weeks or so.


	6. Chapter 6

(I make my way to the center of Burrard Bridge, stopping and looking south at Granville Island. The city of Vancouver is especially cold this winter, definetly more so then my native Los Angeles. Despite being almost 1300 miles north, I find myself growing used to this city quickly.

Corporal Haku Tsubota is also an LA native, growing up in J-town. He was part of the "Second-Wave" of X-Com recruits, soldiers sent only after the attack on Hamburg.)

"X-Com, as I understand it was first created as an dumping ground. An Belgian program for soldiers to useful to discharge but too troublesome to keep in their regular units. If Belgium had held territory in Antarctica, these soldiers would have been sent there. This was back in the early 80s."

(A few rowers go underneath us on the False Creek.)

"It was only in the late 90s that it became something more. As a gesture of cooperation, X-Com was transformed into an UN task force to deal with unusual circumstances."

(He grins wryly, eyes a bit out of focus.)

"As one of the old-timers told me, it was still an dumping ground, just a much bigger one often sent on wild goose chases. Of course, back then an government, never mind a group of governments, funding an group of alien hunters would've be a laughingstock. As a result, every time X-Com went into the field, it would be under an new name. Usually logistical units, no one ever looks to closely at them."

(All mirth fades quickly from his face.)

"The first time we actually took to the field under our own name was when 137 people died. Compared to what came later, especially the disaster at the Port of San Diego or the 3 Gorges Dam catastrophe, it was a Thursday but it shocked the world."

(He pauses, a hand reaching into his pocket.)

"My first field deployment with XCOM was Operation Blinding Fury, on the night of March 31st, 2015."

(He nods as i stiffen.)

"You recognize the date, good. Most people remember that horrid night. I was part of the first unit to land, a full platoon carried in Skyrangers. Running down that ramp, our boots thudding on the metal."

(His eyes are unfocused, as if focusing hard on remembering.)

"The first thing that hit us was the screams, they seemed to echo in our helmets, coming from all around us. Then the smell of smoke and flesh burning. My squad came around a corner just in time to see a fleeing college student turn the corner, clad in only in a bikini. This purple and yellow blur slammed into her, snarling and howling as we fired.

It happened so fast, this young woman had come to Cancun as part of the annual spring break. She was young, probably only 19 or 20. Gone, instantly."

(He snaps his fingers.)

"Gone and that thing just took the bullets. We fired and fired, emptying our magazines and reloading before doing it again. When it finally went down, we'd hit it some 200 times. Utterly ruined it as an sample. I don't quite remember what happened next. My squad said i ran to the woman, shaking her, trying to get her to respond, telling her she'd be fine. It seemed like I didn't realize she was gone. They had to pull me off, Sergeant Thompson ringing my bell to snap me out of it."

(I notice his hands are shaking.)

"We spread out, reinforcing the local police and, once they arrived, the Mexican army. More and more XCOM teams landed every hour until we'd secured the area."

(He sighs.)

"I attended the memorial reopening last year. It was touching, a park where every brick had the name of someone who died."

(He stays quiet for a few minutes before asking if I'd like to get lunch. We walk to a small stand selling Japanese style hot dogs. We part ways after we finish our lunch. Haku Tsubota now works as a cook in a restaurant.)

_**{[-]}**_

_Well, that was grim. So that was the first Terror Mission, a bit ahead of schedule. Sorry for taking so long, it's been a busy couple of months. I've finally graduated High School *Happy Dance* but my job hours have gotten longer to compensate so I don't have quite as much free time as I'd like._

_Also, that XCOM2 trailer. So awesome. Basically everything coming out of E3 right now as well._

_Hope to see you soon._


End file.
